The ESPITAP study, from the Tarragona-Reus USR, receives a Battestini Award from the Tarragona Academy of Medical Sciences
The study, led by Dr. Francisco Martín, coordinator of the Tarragona-Reus USR of the IDIAPJGol, deals with a smoking cessation program for active smokers between 35 and 70 years of age in Camp de Tarragona.
Last Thursday, October 6, at a ceremony held at the Tarragona Official College of Physicians, the Tarragona Academy of Medical Sciences presented the Battestini Awards. One of them was for the work “Effectiveness of motivational intervention based on spirometry results to achieve smoking cessation in primary healthcare patients: randomized, parallel, controlled multicentre study”, published on April 21, 2021 in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health of the BMJ group.
The jury awarded him the prize for the best article published on improvement in the provision of health services in the field of primary care. The principal investigator and coordinator of the USR Tarragona-Reus, dr. Francisco Martín, collected the award on behalf of the research group leading the ESPITAP study.
Smoking is a public health problem of the first order worldwide. The work presented describes the efficacy of a personalized intervention to stop smoking based on the personalized information that is given from the results of a spirometry, added to the usual health advice. This is a randomized, parallel, controlled and multicenter clinical trial, in which 12 ICS primary care centers in Camp de Tarragona participated.
The participants were active smokers, between 35 and 70 years old, without known respiratory disease. All of them received advice to stop smoking and their lung function was evaluated by spirometry. Subsequently, they were randomly included in the intervention group (IG), in which they received detailed information on the spirometry, or in the control group (CG), where they were simply informed that the results were within normal values.
The main study variable was prolonged abstinence (12 months) confirmed by co-oximetry. 286 participants from the IG were compared with 285 from the CG, and no significant differences were found between groups. Prolonged abstinence was higher in the intervention group compared to the control group (5.6% vs. 2.1%; p=0.03). Cumulative abstinence was significantly associated with the intervention (HR=1.98; 95% CI=1.29-3.04).
In conclusion, the spirometry intervention improved the effectiveness of routine health advice to quit smoking, which doubled the likelihood of long-term abstinence. These results add evidence to the current scientific knowledge on anti-smoking interventions and support a simple strategy to implement as a preventive public health activity in primary care.
The research team is made up of Francisco Martín, José Basora, Felipe Villalobos, Nuria Martín, Estefanía Aparicio, Irene Pascual, Antonio Santigosa, Roxana Catalín, Cristina Rey and Rosa Solà.
